


a liar, a thief, a sword

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Arguing, Arthur POV, Childbirth, Chivalry, Dorne, Elia Martell Lives, F/M, In which Arthur steals Elia and her babes from King's Landing before the battle of the Trident, Mentioned onesided Arthur Dayne/Rhaegar Targaryen, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Relationship, Rescue, Romance, and Elia and Lyanna meet again at Starfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-13 11:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15363378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Perhaps it had been that, her childish haughty pronouncement that he lacked all courtesies, which helped fan the flames of his desire to be a courtly knight, or perhaps it was only his pride and lust for battle, his desire to prove himself against his fellow man, to make a glorious name for himself. He would be a lowly man, he thinks now, a wretched beggar, if it meant he could keep her safe.





	a liar, a thief, a sword

**Author's Note:**

> This story was sparked by the prompt "You lied to me" and a reminder from flesh_and_bone_telephone that I had yet to write a story for this pairing.
> 
> if you want visuals for this fic, I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/176157130157/in-which-arthur-steals-elia-and-her-babes-from)

 

 

“You lied to me, Ser,” she says, her voice tight with fury.

People do not call Elia fierce, they use other words: wan, delicate, fragile. People are fools, Arthur thinks, for Elia has the fires of Dorne in her belly, she hides her steeliness behind her courtesies and kindnesses just as Oberyn hides his behind his wicked laughter, and on the rare occasion when courtesies are meaningless, such as when a knight steals her and her babes from the Red Keep, the affinity of brother and sister becomes plain.

“You told me," she continues, the sunlight glancing off the heavy gold earrings she wears, "that my husband, the crown prince, had called for us, you told me that you were taking us to him and then you bundled us out of the city and onto this squalid fishing boat like runaways.”

She would be burning him with her unrelenting gaze if she was not forced to glance at intervals towards the railings of the boat, to watch Rhaenys, who is speaking her babbling excitement about the fish lately caught by the fisherman standing beside her, a man by the name of Davos who Arthur had paid a pretty sum to smuggle the princess and her children out of King’s Landing.

People call Elia frail because of her struggles to bear children, the weeks and moons she has spent abed before or after their birth, with thinned blood and ashen skin, her heart racing, he heard a maester once say, as fast as a runaway horse. What does the strength of a person's body have to do with their character, Arthur wonders, when he has met many hardy knights who might ride for days upon end with no complaint, who rise up ready for battle in an instant, who have weak spirits, whose honour collapses with the barest nudge.

“Westeros is at war and you stole us away from the walls that might keep us safe. I shall never forgive you for this, Arthur,” she swears darkly, her hands shaking where she holds them in her lap. This is the first time she is free to speak her mind to him, for the first two days of their journey she spent dozing, recovering from their flight out of the city and her shock at Arthur's subterfuge. He had worried for her, stayed awake through the nights watching her and caring for Aegon and Rhaenys who were too young to see their time on the boat as anything else but a lark.

He longs to reach out and take her hand in his but to do so would be the gravest insult to her now. She does not need to know that he loves her as well, he does not need to add to her fires of fury and have her think he has stolen her away for himself, that he is just like Rhaegar, abducting women that are not his to have.

“You think you were safe there, with the king?” he finds himself asking, instead of soothing her with softer words.

He and Elia sparred often with words as children when his father had cause to bring him to Sunspear on visits, before he left for his new life in King's Landing. She used to say that he drove her mad, that she never argued with anyone else but he, that he was obstinate and proud and stupid. He had thought of marrying her, silly boyhood thoughts, before he became infatuated with Rhaegar and joined the Kingsguard. If only, he thinks viciously now, he had never met the prince, never fallen sway to his false nobility.

He does not know how and when to tell Elia about what her husband has done, about the babe that had begun to swell beneath Lyanna’s gown when he had left Rhaegar for King’s Landing, and sent a raven to the Starks about her whereabouts. He prays every night now for the safety of the little wolf and her cub, that Ned Stark has found her in time before she is forced to give birth in that horrible tower. He learned on his journey to King’s Landing that Rhaegar had set off behind him to take charge of the Crown army, and if he had been but a day later, he would not have been able to smuggle Elia and her children from the Keep. He thanks the gods for the speed of his horse, for their favour.

She sets her jaw angrily. “I think that you should not have lied to me, treated me like chattel.”

“I would say that I was sorry for lying, except I cannot be," he says, opening his hands, "for you would have refused to leave with me, we would still be there arguing, while the armies of our foes lined up outside the city.”

“Rhaegar will win the battle,” she says but he knows she does not quite believe that. Her faith in her husband has dimmed since he ran away with a girl-child and left her to suffer the scorn of the king.

“I hope he does, and if he does, we shall return and no harm will be done,” he says, lying boldly, for stealing the princess and the heirs to the throne is not a crime that might ever go unpunished.

“My children, Arthur,” she says and her breath hitches. “I am nothing next to them, I would give anything to keep them safe.”

“As would I, princess,” he says.

“But when the king learns what we have done, he will send armies to Dorne, this will split the kingdoms in two, you know not what you have _done_ ,” she says and then the babe lying on the pile of cushions beside them, as they sit under the canopy Arthur hastily erected the first morning afloat so that Elia would not have to sit in the close darkness of the ship’s cabin, makes a disgruntled sound and she lifts him into her arms, rocking him from side to side, bending to murmur to him as locks of hair fall forward over her shoulder.

He had told her he was taking her to Dorne to meet with Rhaegar, and that the king must not know, and in the hour she had to pack her belongings she chose Dornish gowns to bring with her and it pleases him to see her out of the starched fabrics of King’s Landing, the tight bodices and heavy skirts.

“I could not risk your life, Elia, nor Rhaenys and Aegon, it is that simple,” he says. His mind is made for the battlefield, not for diplomacy, his hand is fitted for a sword to fight with, not a pen and ink to scratch out clever words of politicking.

She sighs wearily, her eyes fixed on Aegon and his little hand which grasps the pendant of a sun that Oberyn had gifted her when she wed Rhaegar, back when she shone with a pure kind of happiness, back before the world made its bruises upon her.

Oberyn might kill Arthur himself for what he has done, but he hopes he understands why, he hopes that after all the battles have been fought, and the mounds of bloodied men are buried and mourned for, he might visit with them at Starfall or wherever else they should hide, and brother and sister might be reunited.

“At least we might finally get a decent meal when we get to Dorne, and have some proper wine,” he says and she shakes her head in disbelief, her eyebrows raised at his inappropriate levity, but he can see the barest glimmer of humour in her eyes, that glimpse of the girl who had sat opposite him at a childhood feast and rebuked him for his terrible table-manners.

Perhaps it had been that, her childish haughty pronouncement that he lacked all courtesies, which helped fan the flames of his desire to be a courtly knight, or perhaps it was only his pride and lust for battle, his desire to prove himself against his fellow man, to make a glorious name for himself. He would be a lowly man, a wretched beggar, if it meant he could keep her safe, he thinks now, picturing the white cloak he had discarded like the peel of a rotten fruit in his room in the Red Keep, the gleaming armour he had replaced with hardy leathers brown like the dirt of the orchard in Starfall where he had slept many a night as a child, dreaming of all the adventures to come.

“I am only looking forward to getting off this boat,” she says, after a pause in which he expects she is thinking of further damning pronouncements against him. They have reached a temporary truce then, at least until the next morning when she will rightly censure him again.

He shall take the whip of her tongue as his due and only pray that her fury may continue, like her life, that she may cherish her grudge against him as she watches her children grow safe and hale, as she finds a greater happiness than she ever could in the treacherous halls of the Red Keep.

“The sea does not agree with you, princess?”

“No, and neither does it you. Don’t think I didn’t notice you vomiting over the side of the boat last night.”

He breathes a laugh and then turns to greet Rhaenys who comes running, her black curls wild about her shoulders, to proudly show off the fish she has caught with a line all by herself.

“A rare specimen, princess,” he says and takes it from her gingerly as Elia allows herself a small smile before the prince in her arms demands feeding and Arthur leaves her to lean over the railings and stare at the horizon, hoping and praying for the safety of all the precious cargo aboard their boat.

 

*

 

He does not see Elia at all their first week in Starfall, his sister whisking her and her children away to her private chambers, with a steady flow of servants and maids and maesters and septas flowing in and out of the door which is guarded by a hulk of a man named Symon who stares at Arthur like he is shit on his shoe whenever he gets close.

Ashara hardly looks more kindly upon him when they see one another, railing against him for such a foolhardy plan, for risking Elia and her children, while he stands there stoic, knowing that she is simply fearful, that she had heard Elia had been abducted and feared her dead before her brother appeared on his rickety fishing boat with his stolen cargo.

 _You are so stupid_ , she had said after dashing down to the harbour, clutching him to her so tightly it almost hurt, her breath shaking fitfully, before her attentions rightly turned to Elia and the little ones.

That first week he walks the corridors of his childhood palace alone, making a lonely vigil outside his sister's rooms, thinking that this must all be some odd dream, that he should turn a corner and see the reflection of himself in a bronze mirror and realise that he is not a knight at all, but only a boy playing, that he never left for King's Landing, that no tragedy awaits.

Later, he visits the stores, the armouries, the grand stepwell where the thundering torrents of the Torentine are corralled into placid waters, the forge, the kitchens, the orchards of fig and olive and blood orange; he speaks with servants, with the castellan and the master-at-arms, with their bannermen who have heard wild rumours about the identity of Starfall's newest visitors; he trains in the yard, beating all who step up to fight him, reminding the boastful youths that he is the Sword of the Morning, and working his body until his muscles burn and his mind is free for a glorious few moments of worry about what is to come.

Ravens have been sent out across Dorne - though Arthur argued that they should not be, that they should hide away here and tell no one who Starfall harboured; to which Ashara had raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow and said, _how long do you expect we can hide here with none knowing, should we lock the servants inside the keep, keep the merchants from our doors, cut off tongues? The rumours are spreading quicker than a storm, you cannot hide what you have done, Arthur_ \- and while he waits for Oberyn to arrive and murder him, a raven returns to them bearing fateful news like a crack of thunder splitting the sky.

The prince, Elia's husband and her children's father, is dead.

It is Ashara who informs Elia, while Arthur lurks outside again, useless, but the princess emerges from her rooms but an hour afterwards, Aegon in her arms, Rhaenys following at her feet with the kitten Ashara has given her to replace the one she left behind in the Red Keep.

"Princess," Arthur says solemnly, dropping to a deep bow before her, his knee pressing sharply into the marble of the floor. He does not want to look up, to see her sorrow, to have her see _his_ sorrow. He loved her husband, his prince, and now he loves her. Is there a sordid part of him that is glad that Rhaegar is dead? If she looked at him might she be able to see it, to know how craven he is?

"Ser Arthur," she says and places her hand on his shoulder.

"I am sorry," he says, paltry words for her loss.

"As am I," she says wearily and he finally glances up, sees the new shadows under her eyes, her trembling bottom lip, and the resolute set of her jaw.

 

*

 

The Red Keep falls and at Starfall the council meetings drag through days and nights and weeks and moons; the ravens arrive, the messengers on horseback, the sellswords smelling the possibility of coin and bloodshed on the air; men come to blows on the training yard, in the barracks, and the encampments of soldiers outside the city walls; gifts are given, alliances made, promises sworn; maps are dusted off and tomes are studied; harvests are brought in, defences repaired, and scouts are sent out to the hills and valleys, the sands and the marches to the north.

It is Arthur himself who chooses the scout to traverse the Prince's Pass, past Kingsway and the dizzying towers of Skyreach, to learn what he might about the nameless tower where he had last left the Kingsguard and Lyanna, swearing him to absolute secrecy, cruelly implying that the man's sister who works as a maid in the palace might come to harm if he tells ought about his mission. Arthur and Ashara argue nightly in his solar, the shutters closed tight lest their words are overheard, and the incense braziers filling the room with their woozy curls of smoke, about whether to tell Elia about the Stark girl.

"I know that you love her," Ashara says one night, reclining on the couch as he stalks back and forth on the carpet before her. She has always been graceful, calm in her manner no matter how wroth she is, and Arthur has always been restless, his body straining against stillness and idleness.

"You know nothing," he says sullenly, a boy again before her.

She scoffs.

"What I do or do not feel has no bearing on this decision."

"A decision that is not yours to make," she reminds him.

"It would hurt her to know about Lyanna, about the child in her belly."

"She knows about Lyanna already, likely she suspects her fool of a husband got her with child too. You treat her unfairly, you say to me that the court was wrong to think her weak and then you act just the same. You lied to her, Arthur, and took her from her home on false pretences, she's not a child," she says angrily.

He throws up his hands. "All this talk of lies and stealing, I saved her, Ashara, where no one else could."

"Ah," his sister says, standing up now, "so you do not think you have been praised enough, is that it? We have not paid proper dues to the Sword of the Morning and his daring plan? You wish for a song to be sung about your valour?"

"No," he spits out and then leans his arms on the ledge above the fireplace and bows his head. Insults and cruel words lie on his tongue but he does not wish to speak them, Ashara has always been better with words, cleverer than him, wiser like most women are, having to remain at home and clean up the messes of their foolhardy men who blunder about, acting without thinking.

"Tell her tomorrow," he says, "you are right, I was prideful, I thought I knew best, and I was wrong."

A soft hand touches his back and then he feels his sister rest her head on his shoulder. "But you were right, Arthur, to take her from that place, it was honourable of you to try to save her, to do what no one else would have done. A true knight, they shall call you, when all the wars are done."

"Even if we fall?" he says bitterly, "Even if Elia and her children die anyway?"

She clucks her tongue. "The Sword of the Morning defeated? I do not think so."

"Oh yes," he says, turning and rubbing a hand across his chin, "one man against the might of the crown, a fair fight indeed."

She rests her hands on his shoulders and regards him fondly. She looks tired, but still beautiful. The greatest beauty in King's Landing, he heard another knight say once and he was filled with such a twisting maelstrom of emotions - should he defend Elia, or his sister? - that it makes him want to laugh to think of now, at men and their desire to defend the pride of women who do not belong to them.

"I wanted to kill him myself," he confesses.

"I know that."

"And you do not hate me for it? I was Kingsguard, sworn to protect him."

"You wanted to kill him, but you might not have done so. And you forget, you are my brother, my loyalty is to you not some foreign prince who cannot keep his cock in his breeches."

"I recall you wanting to marry him once."

She hums. "As did you," she whispers archly and he closes his eyes.

"We are all fools in love, are we not," he comments, turning from her and making for the door.

"Sleep well, brother."

"And you too, sister," he says with a smile and walks along the halls to his lonely room, while the sea breezes slip through the high windows of the keep and dance around his heels.

But there is no restful sleep for him that night because he is woken several hours later by a servant who bids him return to Ashara's rooms and he stumbles into his clothes, Dawn strapped to his hip as always, his mind sluggish with half-forgotten dreams. He does not know what he expects to find in her solar, but it is surely not Lyanna Stark lying on a couch, her limbs pale, a heap of bloodied cloths at her feet while she is tended to by the maester and two of Ashara's handmaidens, with Elia stroking her brow and murmuring comforting words to her, while Ashara rocks a small black-haired babe in her arms.

He stands stock-still on the threshold of the door and then Ashara motions her head to the adjoining room and he follows her, glancing back at the scene in the solar as if it might vanish were he to look away.

"Ned brought them here, Lyanna and her son," Ashara says, as he stares at the babe, the new prince, in his sister's arms.

"Ned?" he says gormlessly.

She snaps her fingers in front of his face. "Are you awake, Arthur?"

"Yes," he says, pushing her hand away, and squaring his shoulders. "Where is he?"

"In rooms below, with his companion, a crannogman, they say they fought off the Kingsguard and that you had sworn to them in your raven that Lyanna would be safe here."

"She would, she will," he says, pacing now as his sister follows him around the room.

"Of course," she says and then Elia sweeps through the door, her hair loose around her shoulders, her gauzy dressing gown smeared with sweat and blood.

"She asks for her son," Elia says and Ashara nods and steps from the room with the babe, leaving Arthur and Elia alone together.

There is a moment's pause and then Elia threads her fingers together before her. "You knew about Lyanna and her pregnancy, did you not, Ser Arthur?" she declares.

"I did, princess."

"Another lie then," she says with a sigh. "Why is it that you believe you know best for me, Arthur? Are you my father, my brother, my husband?"

"No," he says, swallowing as she moves closer.

There is something about birth that lends an otherworldliness to the women involved - the mother, the handmaidens who help her, the wet nurse standing by with burning breasts, the maids that ferry water in and bloodied cloths out - as if they have touched the very truth of life and death, understood it in a way that even soldiers who daily deal in death do not. Elia appears to him now like some spirit come to chastise him, some goddess that he could never hope to be worthy of.

"I am your sword," he says, flustered and meaning to say _shield_. But then a sword has always fitted better in his hands than a shield, even before he was given his title. His first master-at-arms had had to tie his shield to his arm because he was forever dropping it and forging forward with steel alone. _It means nothing that you land a blow on your opponent if they can stab you in the guts at the same time,_ he used to say, to which Arthur had thought, _then I shall carry a dagger in one hand and a sword in the other_. Since the first time he wielded Dawn, he has never picked up a shield, for it is a greatsword that needs both hands to heft it.

"A man is not a sword," Elia says in a sad voice that guts him.

"Is she well, Lyanna?" he asks, looking towards the door.

"She has lost a lot of blood and she is torn badly, if she lives she will not bear another child."

He shakes his head. "She is a child herself, Rhaegar is to blame for this," just as he is to blame for all of it, for Elia's hurts, perhaps for her lost babes too. Rhaegar's love, Arthur thinks, has wounded more than the hearts of these two women, it has ravaged their bodies too, and the realm split asunder. To think that he had thought of the prince as noble, as honourable, as the very best of men. To think he had _loved_ him.

"He told her pretty lies, my husband," Elia says, plucking at the sleeves of her dress sodden with blood, "of prophecies and dreams and visions, of grand futures, of love that might conquer all obstacles. He told her lies and he stole her, Arthur, a girl-child promised to another, he took what he wished and damned us all. He left her there with no maester to tend to her and no family. Were the Kingsguard there to keep her safe or to keep her locked away, to stop her from escaping?" Tears are rolling down her cheeks now and he takes her hand and squeezes it gently, wishing he could take her burdens too, her sorrow, and hold them for her.

"We believed he was different from his father," he says.

"He _was_ ," she says insistently and then wipes the back of her fingers across her mouth, flinching when she realises they are stained with blood.

"Here," he says, moving to bring her one of the bowls of water discarded by a maid, holding it before her so she may wash her hands.

"This is pointless," she says hollowly as she does so, "for I shall be soaked to the wrists in blood the minute I return to her side. You do not know how much blood a body holds until it is leaking out of you. I remember thinking that I had a spring in me, that the rivers of blood that leeched from me were endless, that I might drown in my bed."

" _Elia_ ," he says, his heart breaking.

"Is it the same for you in battle?"

He sets down the bowl and flexes his hands. "When I fight I only think of my sword, of the placement of my feet, the twist of my shoulders and the strength of my knees. After battle as the bodies lie around me, as I wade through them and hear their dying groans, that is when I notice the blood, when I let myself think of death."

She stares at him and he tries to fathom her thoughts and then a sound, a groan from the solar, draws her attention away. "Lyanna needs me."

"Go to her then."

"But you have not answered me yet, Ser," she says, looking every inch the princess despite being smeared with grime. "Who are you to me?" she questions, her chin raised.

"I am your sword," he says again, dropping to one knee, the scent of blood filling the room with a dark solemnity, as he takes Dawn from its scabbard and lays it before her.

"A man is not a sword," she repeats.

"That is all I am," he says, begging her to understand something that he himself does not.

"Do knights not have hearts?"

"I have a heart, princess," he says, wishing his voice sounded less harsh. "I have a heart, and it is yours."

"Arthur–" she says, placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder that feels so much heavier than the sword that had knighted him so many years ago, when he had been but a boy playing at killing. She bends to press a kiss to his forehead and then he gets to his feet. "Lyanna needs you," he says.

She nods, and gathers herself and then stops at the threshold of the room, glancing back. "Thank you, Arthur, for breaking your vows for me, for risking everything. I had started to doubt men's honour, you see, to believe that every song I heard as a child, every dream I had of valiant knights, was wrong."

"Princess," he says, and bows his head and when he lifts it she is gone and he breathes a heavy breath, a sob caught in his throat, and then he strides from the room to meet with Ned Stark, to call a council of his commanders, to prepare himself for the wars to come.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment, I'd love to know what people think! :)
> 
> This story is complete as it is and won't be added to, I prefer to leave it here on a hopeful ending rather than attempting to deal with the frankly intimidating tangle of knock-on effects on the plot!
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset for this story [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/176157130157/in-which-arthur-steals-elia-and-her-babes-from)
> 
> [Edit: and if you enjoyed this I wrote another drabble about Arthur saving Elia from King's Landing, here: [A visitor by night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16233311/chapters/37948643)]


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